Flashing phones over and over gets old. A phone is portable, sure, but so is a USB drive—so why not carry a full desktop system in your pocket instead?
That was the idea behind pairing Ventoy + Manjaro: one USB stick that can hold multiple ISO files, while also giving you a setup that keeps settings, installed apps, and personal files after reboot. In other words, a genuinely portable Arch-based desktop.
Why Ventoy is so useful
The big advantage is simple: you do not need to reformat the USB drive every time you want a different boot image.
With traditional tools like Rufus or Etcher, writing a new ISO usually means rewriting the whole drive. Ventoy works differently. You install Ventoy to the USB once, then just copy ISO files onto it. At boot, Ventoy automatically lists them in a menu so you can choose what to start.
That makes it handy for things like Manjaro, Ubuntu, Windows PE, and other bootable images all on the same stick. For anyone who does not want to rebuild a USB from scratch every time, it is hard to beat.
The problem with Manjaro in normal Ventoy live boot
Booting Manjaro from Ventoy in the usual way only gives you a live environment. Any changes you make are lost after reboot.
If you want a real portable system, you need persistence. Ventoy does provide an official Persistence Plugin, but Manjaro’s official ISO does not support persistence in the same way some other distributions do, such as Ubuntu or MX Linux with casper-loop style persistence.
In practice, reports from forum users and the Ventoy community have shown that persistence.dat often does not work properly with Manjaro. Settings and changes may simply fail to save.
A more reliable workaround: install a full Manjaro system to the USB
Instead of forcing Manjaro’s live ISO to behave like a persistent system, the cleaner solution is to use Ventoy’s vtoyboot plugin together with a full Manjaro installation stored on the USB drive.
That means you are not saving changes inside a live session anymore. You are booting an actual installed Manjaro system, much like one installed on a normal hard drive. Persistence works properly, updates work, and the overall result is far better.
The trade-off is that the USB setup is no longer as simple as just dropping ISO files onto the drive. You need to leave enough room for the installed system and its virtual disk file. But the payoff is worth it.
What this setup was tested with
The following method was confirmed working with:
- the latest Ventoy release available near the end of 2025
- Manjaro KDE 24.x series
What you need
- A dependable USB drive
- minimum 64GB
- 258GB or larger recommended
- USB 3.0 recommended for much better speed and a less sluggish experience
- The latest Ventoy release: https://www.ventoy.net/en/download.html
- Linux and Windows versions are both available
- this setup was done with the Linux version
- An official Manjaro ISO
- KDE, XFCE, or GNOME are all fine
- KDE Plasma is a good pick if you want the most polished look
- A backup of anything important on the USB drive, because it will be formatted
Basic process
1. Install Ventoy to the USB drive
Set up Ventoy on the USB first.
One important detail here: since the VDI or VHD file will be placed directly in the main partition, that main partition should ideally use the default layout and occupy the available space as much as possible. Leaving too much unallocated space at the end can leave the main partition too small for the virtual disk file later.
2. Install Manjaro inside VirtualBox
This part is just a normal virtual machine installation. Create a VM, install Manjaro the usual way, and let it finish as if you were installing to a regular virtual disk.
The disk format you end up with depends on what you chose when creating the VM:
VDIVHD
Either is fine as long as you follow the matching Ventoy method.
3. Copy the virtual disk file to the Ventoy USB drive
After Manjaro is installed in VirtualBox, copy the resulting VDI or VHD file to the USB drive.
Then use Ventoy’s vtoyboot plugin according to the official instructions so Ventoy can boot that installed system correctly.
Official documentation
Ventoy’s own documentation already explains the vtoyboot method in detail, so there is not much point in rewriting it line by line here:
https://www.ventoy.net/cn/plugin_vtoyboot.html
If your goal is a USB stick that behaves like a real, updateable, persistent Manjaro installation instead of a disposable live session, this route is much more dependable than trying to force persistence onto the standard Manjaro ISO.